BBC and YouTube tie-up

Video clips to drive traffic and viewers

The deal will see YouTube create two entertainment channels and one for news, dedicated to showing short clips of BBC programming.

The UK broadcasting giant hopes the social networking site owned by Google will attract new viewers and drive more traffic to its own website.

The Corporation will get a percentage of advertising revenue in return from two of the channels. But one of the two channels will be run as a ‘public service’ with no advertising.

Although the cost and duration of the deal were not disclosed, the companies said it would run for ‘several years’ and feature clips of popular programming. The main resources for this content BBC One, News and Worldwide channels.

Several large US broadcasters, including CBS, NBC and Fox, already have similar advertising revenue sharing agreements with YouTube after it was bought by Google in February 2005 for £848 million.

Until then, the site was a haven for pirated or illegally posted material. But, like the many of the other companies that have since signed deal with YouTube, the BBC said it will not seek compensation for the many unauthorised clips already uploaded to its site.